Of course, practically nobody in Israel would dream of according the Arab inhabitants of Greater Israel citizenship and democratic rights. If, perhaps by divine intervention, this were to come about, it would no longer be a "Jewish State." It would be an "Arab Palestinian state."
The only way out would be ethnic cleansing on a huge scale. Some of this is already happening discretely in remote areas. For some time now, in the most remote area of the West Bank, on the edge of the desert south of Hebron, the occupation authorities have been trying to remove the entire Arab population. This week, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, declared the area a "military firing zone" that must be immediately evacuated. People who remain there risk being shot. Agriculturists may return and work on their land, but only on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, when the army is on leave. Zionism in action.
Currently, some five million Palestinians and six million Jews live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The ethnic cleansing of the country is highly improbable, to say the least. Far more likely is the reality of an apartheid state, in which Jews will soon be a minority. That is not a reality envisioned by the Zionist founding fathers.
The only alternative is peace -- Palestine and Israel, side by side. But that is called "post-Zionism," God forbid.
Our leaders escape this reality by a simple device: they don't think about it. They don't talk about it. They prefer to "talk Zionism" -- a string of empty phrases.
But sometime in the future the contradictions of Zionism will have to be faced.
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